The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (22 page)

“Sometimes spirits can call up snakes to come out and eat you; sometimes demons ride white horses through the trees.

“Magnolia trees hold the spirits of all little girls that died on their way to church, yas.  The flowers the same color as their little dresses.

“Cypress, now, they got lots of different spirits, but some of the spirits be sailors and slaves who died a hundred and fifty years ago.  Know how they died?  Demons got them.

“You don’t know this, but I do: some weeds and shrubs got demons, too.  Little demons, like bugs or chickens.  Feel that thistle?  That’s chickens pecking at you; that’s no-see-ums getting their chow down. 

“And those long rows of pines on your neighbor’s land?  You see em?  Yas, those pines have grabbed the spirits of dead soldiers so you can be safe when you walk through them.  You can rest.  You can lean on them. Those soldiers, they can rest now, too.

Some say that when we die we come back as something else—a cow, a pig, a roach.  But maybe we come back as mango trees.

“And if my spirit is in a mango tree, maybe people, maybe birds, come to feed off me and I will be satisfied, I will provide.”

Well, that was even stranger than usual, vaguely depressing but uplifting at the same time.  And complicated and maddening.  What did he know about snake spirits, stands of pines.  Not for the first time, I felt that The Creeper could somehow reach out over the airwaves and read minds, see things that he shouldn’t be able to see.  Yet he had enough of the Delphic Oracle in him that I could never find anything concrete that would help to identify him or pin anything on him as precise as a prediction.

Gina’s PT Cruiser was not in the parking lot, but I went in anyway.  Betty was sitting in Gina’s desk, talking on the phone, but she hung up when I entered.

“Hey, Betty,” I said.  “Is Ginette out selling ads?”

“She’s out all right, but out sick,” she said.

“Did she say what was wrong?”

“No, just that she wasn’t feeling well.  Said she’d be in tomorrow.”

“I’ll check back tomorrow, then,” I told her.  Instead, I went across to the Piggly Wiggly and bought two cans of chicken noodle soup and drove across town to Gina’s house.

I knocked at the door, but didn’t get a response, although I heard the sound of Gina’s guitar coming from a back room.  I tried the door and it was open.  I walked in, feeling pretty sure that I wasn’t interrupting an intimate meeting.  The music was coming from the left and I could see Gina sitting crosslegged on a mattress, bent over a guitar.  It was a different guitar than I had seen the last time I had been here—long and sleek and colored in a golden-brown sunburst.  And, although she was playing it left handed, the pick guard was positioned properly at the bottom.  The song she was playing was not country this time; it was more of a chant.  I heard:

You always were,

you always are,

and you always will be.

You are everywhere,

you are in everything.

While she sang, I had the opportunity to look around the room.  It was the simplest room I had ever seen:  a king-size mattress was centered against the back wall, a nightstand held a clock and a lamp.  There was a bare, but well-made dresser across from the bed, and on the wall a picture of an odd-looking old man with long hair and a hook nose.  Doors led to a closet and bathroom, but both were closed.  Gina herself was dressed in flannel pajamas and had her hair tied back in a ponytail.

Gina looked up and saw me, but her eyes were expressionless, as they had been the first time I had visited her.  I saw that she was in a funk, so I tried to cheer her up.  “Does nothing ever surprise you?” I asked.  “I mean, what if I was a thief?”

“You are a thief,” she said.

I was taken aback.  “What have I taken?” I asked.

“You know what you’ve taken, Sue-Ann.  You’ve taken over mah lahf.  Ah caint go out of the house without thinkin that maybe ah’ll catch a glimpse of you somewhere.  Ah’ve put your number on my speed dial and have to slap mah own hand a hundred tahms a day to keep from callin you.”

“I want you to call me,” I told her.

“Whah?  So you can screw around with mah mind?”

I swear to you that I had no intention of replying as I did; it just came out, like water from a faucet.  “I love you,” I said softly, and almost gasped at my own audacity.  But Gina’s reaction was even more unexpected.  She jumped up from the bed and stomped barefooted into the living room where she found a pack of cigarettes and lit one.  I was left standing in the middle of her bedroom and she glared at me through the open door.

“God damn it Sue-Ann,” she cried. “Can’t you see that you’re scarin the shit outta me?”

“You don’t want me to love you?”

“No!  Yes.  Ah don’t fuckin know!” she shouted, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’ve never seen you cry before,” I said.

“Fuck you, Sue-Ann.  Just fuck you.”

“That kiss in the woods that day didn’t mean anything?”

“It meant
everythin
!” she wailed.

“Then why . . . what did you say?”

“Ah said it meant everythin.  Everythin ah’ve ever wanted in mah whole lahf was in that kiss.  But ah’m not you.  Ah just can’t jump into boilin water without wonderin how bad ah’m goin to get scalded.”

“I won’t burn you.”

“Everyone that’s ever meant more than shit to me has left me hangin.” 

“I won’t leave you.”  

“How do ah know that?”  She was calming down some.  She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her pajamas.

“You’ve got to trust me.” 

“Ah want to, ah do,” she said, blowing smoke.

“Here.  I brought us some chicken soup.”

“Ah’m not really sick,” Gina said.  “Ah jist . . .”

“I can see that,” I smiled.  “But let’s eat it anyway.”  I showed her the two cans of chicken noodle soup.  “Just like mother used to make,” I said.

“An granma, too,” she smiled back at me.

Over the soup, which you should heat—contrary to the directions on the can—without adding any water, Gina started to brighten up.  By the time I had recounted my adventure in rounding up Alikki, she was back to normal and wide eyed.

“Sue-Ann!” she cried.  “What was that girl Krista doin way out there?”

“I expect she lives there,” I said.

“And who was that awful-lookin man that was with her?”

“I don’t know, but I’ma find out.”

“How?”

“I need to show you on the maps,” I said.  I looked around for a place to spread them out.  The dining room table was small and covered with soup bowls and stuff.  I took the maps back into her bedroom and spread them out on the mattress.

“These are the same maps I got from the Property Appraiser’s Office,” Gina said.

“Right.  But I’ve pasted them together to make one big map instead of two smaller ones so you can see how they intersect.”

For the next hour I pointed out how the trail from Meekins’ Market, if you followed it far enough, would almost have to dead end at the west side of Krista’s Compound.  The trail I had followed looking for Alikki came out at the south side.  That meant that if I had followed the trail that had been mowed around The Compound fence, I would have struck the eastern trail.  In other words, there was an actual, if serpentine, trail from Meekins’ Market to my own back yard.

“Well, what are we goin to do next?” she asked.

“First I’ve got to make sure I’m right.”

“How?” she asked.

“By following the trail to the end.”

“To The Compound?”

“To The Compound.”

Gina had gone to the head of the mattress and folded herself into her lotus posture.  I was sprawled out at the foot and my eye caught the picture of the man on the wall.

“Who’s that, I asked.

“Baba.”

I thought I had misheard her.  “Your papa?”

“No, silly. Baba.  He was a spiritual leader.  An avatar.”

“What, Hindu?” I guessed

“Kahnd of a funny mix of Hindu and Sufi and Muslim.”

“You’re, like, into mystics?” I asked carefully.

“Naw, but Baba is kahnd of special to me.”

“Why?”

“Ah don’t know if ah kin explain it. . . did you know that Cal went to college in London for a year?”

“No, I didn’t, but what—”

“It’s somethin that was kinda lahk a crossroads for him.  He made friends there, he did things he’d never done, he felt real free . . .”

“My father did that!” I remembered, “Except that he studied in Florence.”

“And does he always say things lahk,” she deepened her voice to a man’s timber and said, ‘Ah remember that back in Florence we were so pore that we had to eat the bark off the trees.’”

“Or, ‘We rode a train for six days without getting off,’” I laughed.

“Raht,” she smiled.  “They compare everything they do now with what they did in London or Florence.  Ah suspect that you’ll always be thinkin about bein in Iraq.”

“It will be hard to forget it,” I admitted.

“Well, ah’ve never been out of the U S of A, but ah have memories just lahk Cal has about London, except ah got mahn in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.”

“South Carolina?” I asked.

“Ah spent almost six months in Myrtle Beach,” she said.  “Didn’t ya know?”

“Of course not.  What were you doing in Myrtle Beach?” I asked.

“You’re gonna laugh,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Ah was at the Meher Spiritual Center,” she said.

“Mayor . . . ?”

“Baba,” she said.  “You really never heard of Meher Baba?”

“Vaguely, maybe.  But back up, what were you doing in Myrtle Beach?”

“Okay, lookit,” she began.  “Back when ah got divorced from Jimmy, ah wanted to leave Pine Oak for a while.  Ah tried college for a couple of years, but it wasn’t a success.  So ah got in mah car and just drove around the country.  Ah visited mah parents in Texas for a few days, but when ah was supposed to come home, ah didn’t.  Ah wanted to see new things and didn’t know if ah’d ever git another chance.  Ah went up into Colorado and got a job workin horses for a whahl.  When that ended, ah drove up through Chicago and went to Boston and New York for a few days.  Ah walked around Washington, D. C., and ah stood on the banks of the Potomac River.  It was all new and excitin and ah was lonely as ah could be.  Ah lived in Nashville for a couple of months waitin tables and listenin to music til three in the a.m.  Ah wanted to play, too, but ah wasn’t near good enough and ah knew it.  Ah still didn’t want to come back home, but ah didn’t have anything else ah wanted neither.  Ah was livin out of mah car some of the tahm, tryin to save money, and ah was feelin real bad about mahself.  Ah didn’t feel ah had any future.  There wasn’t nothin ah was good at and everythin ah tried went sourer than milk left out in the sun.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Listening to her story was fascinating, not because it was exciting or unique, but because it was so unexpected, so totally out of character from the Ginette Cartwright I had known most of my life.

“Come on, Sue-Ann,” she answered.  “Ah had just got divorced, ah lost mah baby, mah professor boyfriend dumped me, ah flunked out of college, and ah couldn’t play guitar no better’n a ropin horse.  Things just weren’t goin mah way.”

“That’s what I felt when I came back from Baghdad,” I told her.

“Ah know,” she said.  “Wah do you think ah came over that first day?  Ah could see mahself in every move you made.”

“You  . . . I can’t believe that you . . .”  I could hardly speak.  I changed the subject abruptly.  “So what about this Baba?” I asked.

“One day ah was drivin from Ah-Donno to Who-Knows-Where, havin lunch in a diner in Myrtle Beach and ah saw a flyer on the door.  It said somethin lahk ‘Lost?  Come and fahnd yourself.’ Ah know it was silly, but it gave an address and a tahm for later that evenin and there was a picture of a really strange little man with a big nose and mustache and underneath that there was a slogan that said, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’  An ah decided ah wanted to be happy.”  Gina stopped and lit a cigarette.  My own craving was strong, but maybe not as strong as it had been a few days before, and I was able to hold off asking her for one.

“You know anything about eastern religions?” she asked.

“Well, I’m kind of an expert on Islam right now,” I said.

“Sorry, ah wasn’t thinkin.”

“And I know that most people in Bhutan are Tibetan Buddhists,” I added lamely.

“Where’s Bhutan?” she asked.

“Never mind.  Tell me about Baba.”

“Course ah never met the man,” she said, blowing smoke at the ceiling.  “He dahd before ah was born.  But he wasn’t part of any major religion; he just took what he wanted from Hinduism and Sufiism and some of the others and made a philosophy out of em.  He made things seem simple and easy.  He didn’t want us to do any rituals or anything lahk that, but some of us lahk to keep a picture of him around to look at an to remember.”